


The Meteorite's Just What Causes the Light

by p0rth0s



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Partying, Post-Season/Series 07, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:09:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p0rth0s/pseuds/p0rth0s
Summary: “If anyone asks for your autograph tonight, tell them to shove it up their ass.”Shiro coughs out shocked laughter, harsh and loud. “No.”Laden with affected innocence, he suggests, “Break their pen with your magic hand?”“It isn’t about us, remember?” Keith’s below him on the ramp, looking up, and Shiro slides his hand around the back of his neck. “Besides, I don’t think anyone’s here for that.”“I know.” Keith leans into his touch and sighs. “I signed a cadet’s notebook with a smiley face yesterday.”TL;DR the Paladins throw a Paladin party





	The Meteorite's Just What Causes the Light

The liberation of Earth of course means celebration and mourning and the attendance of the Paladins at event after event, pressed uniforms and polished boots. _Polite_ celebration and _polite_ mourning, as if manners play an organic part in either. The war’s still clinging to the Earth like napalm.

Shiro’s beginning to feel the artifice of it, plastered on his face in a directionless smile.

He can’t bring himself to contemplate how much of his diet is made up of hors d’oeuvres, and he wants to meet the monster who decided soup should be served cold in shot glasses so he can level them with his most stern look. He hates crab cakes. He hates that he has an opinion on crab cakes. He’s become adept at smiling convincingly at every diplomat who pauses open-mouthed before shaking his massive metal hand, telling himself it’s hesitation at unfamiliar Earth customs. He’s even getting used to being referred to as Shirogane again after so long in casual company of deep space.

It’s Coran’s Voltron show on sedatives, replete with lashings of interplanetary bureaucracy. A hero shaped cookie cutter hovering above Shiro and the Paladins and threatening to maim them all.

He can tell Keith’s still adapting. He’s convincing when he’s in motion, confidently and passionately parroting Coalition tenets, but in between when he’s standing alone in a throng of strangers with a drink in his hand, he does a pretty convincing impression of a fawn with a head injury.

Shiro can relate.

It’s hard not to go to him, to stand elbow to elbow and halve the burden of response. He knows to the people who matter (Keith) it would be taken as intended. As mutual comfort. But with so many eyes in the room and so many opportunities for interpretation he couldn’t bear the appearance of coddling. Especially given how little Keith needs it.

He knows given their relative positions no one would interpret it in the opposing direction; Shiro seeking succour. That alone is laughable. There are few aspects of Shiro’s life that aren’t eased by having Keith’s hand in holding distance.

Instead, he catches his eye as often as possible, and more often than not finds Keith already in the process of searching out Shiro’s. It’s like a sugar rush every time. One of those fiddly little pastries passing by on endless trays held by endless waitstaff jammed directly into his veins. He probably blushes. He feels like he does, heat trickling down below his high collar. He stands up straighter, he smiles, and smiles broader when Keith smiles back, then smaller and less controlled when Keith clearly laughs and ducks his head to take a sip of his drink.

Two months ago, they kissed for the first time. Keith so responsive, lithe in his arms and wet and pliant against his lips.

Two months ago, Shiro told Keith he loves him for the first time, and he’ll remember the small spellbinding sound Keith made in return for the rest of his life. There had been tears on both ends. Keith loves him too. Shiro knew that, but still. A bronco kick to his chest that he’ll never recover from, his whole life a little more breathless now.

Two months ago, he touched Keith’s dick for the first time, trembling strong muscles and velveteen skin, and it’s the greatest tragedy that he’s fully clothed and trying not to drop bruschetta on the floor in front of dignitaries instead of coiled in Keith’s long limbs and drawing more hitherto unheard sighs from his eager pink mouth.

Two hours ago, Keith had straightened Shiro’s collar with an easy familiarity that had made his knees threaten to buckle.

“You clean up so nice.” Keith’s hands had come to rest on his shoulders, fingers curling a little. “I can’t look at you without wanting to mess you up.”

“What about you?” Shiro had smoothed a palm down his front and hooked a finger in his belt, tugging him closer. “Coalition poster boy.”

“Wow,” Keith had drawled, nostrils flaring, feet inching closer. “Don’t.”

Shiro had laughed through his nose and smiled gently. “Do you hate it?”

“No.” Keith had paused, hands smacking down on Shiro’s shoulders once, relenting to honesty. “A little. Sometimes a lot. You know what it’s like. We’re being paraded around like symbols, but at least we’re serving a purpose. Right now, it doesn’t matter if it isn’t real. Good or bad, they’ll see what they need to in me.” He’d gazed up through his lashes, lips parted. “You don’t. No one looks at me like you.”

Keith’s presence is colossal, Shiro refuses to believe he’s alone in gazing up in awe. “I bet they do.”

“ _No one_.” Keith had hissed, standing on Shiro’s toes and pulling himself up to his height. “Looks at me like you.”

Shiro looks at Keith in his uniform now, and he can’t wait to unwrap him to brass tacks. The parts of him he only allows for Shiro, confident and casual and so sure in his desire. His ass looks so good, it almost fits in Shiro’s whole hand, it’s absurd. His hair, longer every week, spills over his collar, and Shiro wants to step up behind him and brush it aside and pull his jacket down and kiss his spine. There’s so much of him Shiro’s mouth has yet to chart, he could sustain himself off him. Never eat or drink another thing, just feed on the giving warmth of him, the salt of his skin and the texture of his haired thighs beneath his tongue.

He wrinkles his nose at another crab cake, and forces himself to think of anything but Keith, the two of them bound by duty and exhibition a little longer, and his dress jacket and trousers lousy camouflage if he lets his blood flow the way it so urgently wants to.

 

\--

 

“An actual party!” Lance yelps, dropping down next to Allura in the mess hall, orange juice spilling from the glass on his tray. “A real person Paladin party where no one’s trying to prove how great their shit stinks.”

Allura recoils. “I beg your pardon?”

“Not yours.” Lance’s voice dips in the way it only does for her, covering her hand with his and patting it a few times, rabbit quick. “Not now or ever.”

She cocks her head. “Thank you?”

“What’s the venue?” Shiro asks, stirring his oatmeal.

“To be determined.” Lance shrugs. “I don’t think Iverson and friends will appreciate the amount of alcohol we’ve earned. Or Pidge’s dad, for that matter.”

“Or me.” Shiro frowns.

Lance waves his hand dismissively. “Come on, Pidge is a teetotaller. She’s the only one of us smart enough to see what happens to Coran after a few shots of Nunvill and not want to replicate it. And do I have to remind you that we pilot giant robot lions for a living?”

It’s only been a handful of months since Shiro had found himself paying visits to five separate hospital beds on a daily basis, and the memory’s enough to make him push his bland breakfast away. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Lance leans forward with his hands clasped together in mock prayer. “Let me drink to forget, Shiro.”

There isn’t enough drink in the world.

Shiro’s no saint; even he owned a fake ID at one point. At the age the Paladins were being catapulted through wormholes, they should have been laying low in each other’s quarters in the dead of night, drinking and talking until sunrise. They’ve all been unfairly robbed of the choice to be irresponsible on their own terms, and teenage hijinks pale in comparison to deep space and intergalactic war.

He relents. “I guess you could all use a break.”

“ _Yes_.” Lance pumps his fist in the air, and adds, “I hope you’re including yourself in that. I wasn’t going to mention it, but you kind of look like hell.”

Shiro pauses with his very black coffee halfway to his mouth. “I do?”

“No.” Keith directs a crackling glare at Lance, relaxing to unadulterated fondness as he turns to Shiro. “You’re just tired.”

He offers Keith a soft smile that stems from every weary muscle in his body.

It’s true. He’s graduated from exhaustion to something more complex. An object in space, battered and worn down by endless debris, altering the fundamental shape of him. He doesn’t complain, he tries not to pay excess attention to his own fatigue and distortion in light of their devastated world, but he can feel in his bones and his growing distraction in meetings the toll it’s taking on his body and mind. The fading of passion to duty, everything an afterthought to work. A faint hollowness that he knows would have long since emptied him out entirely if it weren’t for Keith.

Now when he feels his eyes straining under lamplight on the cusp of midnight, Keith’s hands are already tugging his datapad from his fingers and his shirt from his pants, gently and firmly luring him to bed for sex or sleep or quiet conversation, recharging him with his warmth and his proximity.

Glancing down, he notices him transferring a hash brown from his own plate to a napkin, sliding it onto Shiro’s tray. No slab of mashed together greasy potato has ever been so beloved.

Keith smiles without catching his eye, and helps himself to Shiro’s fruit salad. “We could head out to the shack? As long as you guys clean up after yourselves and organise your own music and shit.”

“Yes!” Lance rubs his hands together. “Do you think anyone’ll notice if we borrow the Lions for mood lighting?”

“I’d certainly like to see what happens if they try to stop us,” Allura murmurs, a wicked twist to her mouth. Shiro knows that shade of smile. It’s all sneaking out after curfew and intentionally failing to live up to your image and careless laughter under dim streetlights, and it suits Allura just fine.

“Cool. Let me know when it’s happening, and—hm.” Keith pauses, eyebrows furrowing the same way they do when the universe is ending again. “Is this a mom thing? Is this a thing I have to ask Krolia about?”

Shiro laughs quietly, bumping Keith’s knee with his own under the table. “You could invite her too?”

Keith blinks. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Shiro lowers his head and lowers his voice. “Why’s that? Do you have intentions?”

Keith angles his chin up and hooks his boot behind Shiro’s. “Maybe. Do you want me to?”

Yes, but a little foreplay never hurt anyone. “Maybe.”

Keith’s eyes flick down to Shiro’s mouth and he resists the urge to lick his lips. He’s allowed to kiss him now. They’ve both stopped pretending that they want anything less than everything, and Shiro’s fresh green body wants to drape over him like a willow.

“Did they forget we’re here?”

Lance’s stage whisper is enough to remind them both of the setting, and Shiro slowly leans away with a hammy wink that Keith snorts at, and settles for brushing his pinkie with Keith’s on the bench between them. He grew pretty proficient at using his left hand to eat on their trip back to Earth anyway.

Once attention has shifted away from them again, Shiro covers Keith’s hand and squeezes, murmuring, “Do I really look that rough?”

Keith puts his fork down, and turns to face him, gaze never straying from his eyes. “You look like you work fourteen-hour days and pilot a village sized space ship with your brain.”

Shiro smiles weakly. He’s consistently squared away to regulation, but he hadn’t considered the point where even that can’t mask inertia.

“That bad?”

“You look like you care.” Keith reaches up and combs his fingers through Shiro’s bangs, shaping them until he’s apparently satisfied, then swiping a thumb under one of Shiro’s eyes as they fall closed under his touch.

It’s only when he returns to his breakfast that he notices that Keith’s stolen all his strawberries, and ten minutes later in an empty corridor he crowds him into the wall and kisses him to steal a taste back.

 

\--

 

Turns out Krolia is a nonissue, off planet with the Blades, and apologetic about the missed chance to share a night off in the company of her son.

Turns out Matt and the rebels are a generous source of a staggering amount of technicolour liquor, and bizarrely, a lone dusty case of Bud Light. Shiro’s unsurprised that even war couldn’t drive a horse to that water.

Turns out Romelle and Lance are guns at party planning, and by the time Shiro and Keith arrive with Black as the sun is setting, the shack is decked out in twinkling lights. There’s a small band of rebels and Garrison folk alike noodling around on familiar and unfamiliar instruments, laughing together as they tune up.

Turns out there are in fact an alarming number of Coalition members who similarly yearn to let their hair down, and there are already at least fifty people mingling about and pouring drinks as more arrive.

Keith takes Shiro’s hand as they exit Black, walking a step ahead of him with easy grace. He’s casual in black jeans and a tight red t-shirt, and his swaying hips call to Shiro’s hands. It’s Shiro’s fault they’re late. It shouldn’t have taken Keith ten minutes to pull his boots on, but he’d bent over to tie his laces and Shiro hadn’t been able to muster the strength to not tug him back into his lap on the edge of Keith’s bed and coil his arms around his waist.

Keith had slumped back against his chest as Shiro’s lips landed on his cheek. “You know, I used to think you were so disciplined.”

“I am.” Shiro’s thumb had found a strip of skin at his stomach and slid below his waistband. “Do you have any idea how good you look?”

“I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me.”

“It’d be an act of gross negligence not to,” he’d murmured, nosing at Keith’s jaw. “I kind of want to lick you. Is that weird? Tell me if I’m being weird.”

“You’re being weird.” Keith’s laughter never sounds cruel, and he’d tilted his head to kiss Shiro. “I like you weird.”

Emboldened and weird, Shiro had licked Keith’s cheek and held on tight when Keith yelped and squirmed in his arms, pulling him back onto the bed and revelling in Keith’s hands as he’d batted at Shiro’s chest with a loose fist and tugged at his shirt.

Now, Keith stops them a few steps into the sizzling warm air. “If anyone asks for your autograph tonight, tell them to shove it up their ass.”

Shiro coughs out shocked laughter, harsh and loud. “ _No_.”

Laden with affected innocence, he suggests, “Break their pen with your magic hand?”

“It isn’t about us, remember?” Keith’s below him on the ramp, looking up, and Shiro slides his hand around the back of his neck. “Besides, I don’t think anyone’s here for that.”

“I know.” Keith leans into his touch and sighs. “I signed a cadet’s notebook with a smiley face yesterday.”

Shiro steps closer and starts walking Keith backwards. “Cute.”

He peels Shiro’s hand from his neck and laces their fingers again. “If I have to draw any tonight, I’m putting fangs on them.”

“Still cute.”

He bares his teeth in a snarl ( _cute_ ) and turns, leading a willing Shiro to the drinks table currently staffed by Hunk and Pidge, and Shiro contemplates for the millionth time how much he enjoys following him.

“Hey! Family’s all here!” Hunk raises a fist to bump against Keith’s and lazily salutes at Shiro. “Hope you wore your comfy shoes.”

Keith nods at Pidge where she’s hunched over with one eye closed, pouring perfectly level shots of highlighter pink fluid. “Did Lance rope you into this?”

“Nah.” Hunk shakes his head, lining up empty cups. “Glad to help. Besides, I won’t miss catching up with anyone while I’m the one holding all the booze. Win-win.”

Shiro smiles, thick with pride. “Remind me why you aren’t Earth’s ambassador to the stars?”

“Shucks, man. Are you trying to make me blush?” No try about it. Hunk looks down with a tiny smile and shrugs loosely, uncapping a bottle of something disturbingly green. “Still busy trying to stop them from falling, anyway. You know how it is.”

Keith points at Pidge’s flamingo hued drinks. “What is that?”

She pushes two towards them. “Beats me. Hunk said it tastes like someone crossed a banana with a latté.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” She smirks and holds the bottle up to the waning light. “I’m waiting for the sun to go down so I can see if it glows in the dark.”

Keith releases Shiro’s hand to take a glass in each, and passes one to him with a raised eyebrow.

Shiro’s felt less trepidation facing a Galra fleet. He isn’t much of a drinker these days, and even before Kerberos his taste rarely wandered from beer or vodka-plus-juice. He has no idea what his tolerance for unidentified cosmic alcohol may be.

He lifts the glass and takes a tentative sniff. It’s grim. “Are we doing this?”

Keith answers in the most Keith way possible. By knocking the drink back in one and swallowing, allowing a single small cough to escape his lips.

He clears his throat and sets his empty glass down. “I regret that.”

Shiro laughs. “Bad?”

“I’m not saying anything until you’ve had yours.”

Keith’s lips and eyes are shining, and Shiro slides a hand around his waist and pulls him closer to whisper, “I want to lick you again.”

Keith leans his weight against him, and cups Shiro’s wrist to lift his arm. “Later. Drink your oven cleaner.”

He does. It sears on the way down and sets his insides alight, and Keith coos more than he laughs, rubbing Shiro’s back as he hiccups.

 

\--

 

Shiro settles between Allura and Matt under the glow of the Blue Lion’s chin on an old sofa he’s never seen before, and watches Keith as he catches up with a trio of Blades on shore leave, leaning against the wall of the shack and chatting animatedly. The air is warm and perfumed with the smell of sweet smoke, and a dance floor’s starting up in the dust in front of the band.

Allura tips into his side, her glowing loose curls flowing over his shoulder and her foot tapping with the beat.

“This probably won’t surprise you, but I never really got to do this when I was younger.” Her words are only slightly slurred, but they’re flowing like gentle water, more relaxed than Shiro’s ever seen her. “We couldn’t justify the extravagance of fancy events with the war, and even when we could I had to wear an old-fashioned gown and smile and dance with boring boys so they didn’t sulk.” She pokes Shiro sharply in the knee with a newly manicured nail. “You and your egos.”

Shiro lets his head tip sideways to rest on hers. She smells like jasmine. “We suck.”

“You _do_.” She knocks her cup off his and takes a short sip. “The girls were always better dancers, but they rarely asked because they were like me. They just wanted to be left alone for a dobosh to eat and drink without getting tugged around like a mop.” She sighs. “I miss it now, _so_ much, but at the time I would have killed for something like this.” She straightens her bare legs in front of her and raises one in the air. “Do you like my shorts?”

They’re bubble gum pink and high waisted and her legs look even longer than Keith’s. “They suit you. Earth suits you.”

“You do have a few things going for you.” Her tan pump dangles off her toes as they wriggle, and she elbows Shiro harmlessly in the ribs. “What about you? Did you have a bad boy phase before all of this mess? You’re so burly, I can just see you in leather.”

Matt props his chin off Shiro’s shoulder, and announces. “Leather comes from Kalteneckers.”

“From their _teats_?” Allura yelps, a hand flying to her collar. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

Shiro shoves Matt against the arm of the sofa and holds him there, laughing. Both at Allura’s horror, and at the image of him as any kind of textbook bad boy.

To be fair, he wanted to rebel. He did the young lust, hooking up with guys he didn’t know and hoping they left marks, leaning into that which set him apart and daring anyone to say a word. He did howling through canyons with knuckles white on the accelerator, red dust thick in his hair.

He wanted to battle against his uncooperative body, but his body had a bigger army. He couldn’t drown his amorphous anger in liquor without his muscles hitting back harder in response and rendering the whole routine useless. It just led to more frustration, and in the end clean eating and strict exercise felt more like a rebellion than acting out. Ferociously controlling the cogs he could to spite the those that slipped and jammed. Pretending not to be pissed off all the time so the world wouldn’t have another reason to hold his dreams a little further from his reach. Getting stronger, working harder, breaking every record and proving everyone wrong when they said he was too sick to see the stars. Tar black resentment converted to flying colours.

He takes a sip of the weird sherbet flavoured concoction Hunk made for him, and watches Keith grip one of the Blades by the shoulder and double over with laughter. He wants to give that Blade a gift basket for causing something so breathtakingly beautiful.

He releases Matt, and turns to Allura, head noticeably a little fuzzy. “What do you think?”

She leans back and takes a deep breath, narrowing her eyes at him in contemplation. “You’re a guardian, Shiro. I bet you were always the least drunk man in the room.”

On Shiro’s other side, Matt snorts. “I once saw him puke in a lampshade.”

Traitor. “It was my birthday!”

“It was my lampshade!”

“You shouldn’t have fed me something called ‘rocket fuel sangria’ if you didn’t want to live with the consequences.” He’s pretty sure it was just vodka spiked red wine with orange chunks in it, and the hangover had been singularly lethal. He became one with the bathroom floor.

“Well, you ruined it for me and God, so you’ll never have to worry about that again.” Matt groans, standing a little unsteadily. “My room smelled like your insides for weeks.”

Allura watches him walk away as Shiro hones in on Keith approaching like a ship to a lighthouse, and sounds oddly fascinated as she declares, “Disgusting.”

Keith drops heavily onto the sofa and half in Shiro’s lap. “What’s disgusting?”

Shiro smiles drowsily up at him as Keith loops his arms around his neck. “Me.”

“Bullshit.” He jabs a finger at Allura and leans his hot body across Shiro’s chest. “He washes his towels every single morning, Allura. He folds his underwear.”

“That’s nice.” She says absently, rising to her feet with as much grace as ever. “I think I’m going to ask Lance to dance. See if I can’t clean the floor with him.”

Keith, apparently satisfied in his defence of Shiro’s decency, relaxes and lays back over his thighs, smiling up at him with his hair spilled out like nightfall.

Shiro trails his finger down Keith’s nose and over his lips to the tip of his chin. “You having fun?”

“Yep.” Keith hauls himself up and hooks Shiro’s drink from his hand, taking a long sip and wincing. “Is this even alcohol? I can’t tell if it’s doing anything for me.”

He does look a lot crisper than Shiro feels, and he doesn’t bother reclaiming his drink. “I probably shouldn’t have any more for a while.”

“Now you know how I feel when I drink with the Blades.” He pushes Shiro’s hair off his forehead and kisses his temple. “Come on. It’s too early for you to look this faded. Let’s go mingle.”

 

\--

 

They make their way back to the bar, and Keith enthusiastically joins Pidge in building some sort of triangular prism out of shot glasses that Shiro anticipates catastrophically failing.

He’s switched to water, satisfyingly buzzed and mildly responsible, and he spots Romelle on the edge of the dance floor where she’s eyeing Coran, Lance, and Allura tearing an energetic hole in the crowd.

She glances up as Shiro draws even with her, and points her cup in Lance’s direction.

“Is that an Earth dance?”

He’s performing some variation on running man that makes him look like he’s misplaced his bones, legs flicking about like cooked spaghetti. It soothes a part of Shiro that’s permanently raised with guilt to know that even with all they’ve been through, the Paladins have still managed to jointly hold onto a sizable chunk of their joy.

He smiles, and shouts, “I think it’s a Lance dance.”

“It’s—” she tilts her head, brow puzzled. “Spirited.”

Coran waves his arms straight in the air, equally elastic. “Is that an Altean dance?”

Romelle shakes her head. “He makes me question a lot of things.”

He bumps his hip against hers, indefinably pleased when she bumps back. “You should join them. Give them some pointers.”

“Not you?” She levels him with an unsettling grin, her eyes flicking over his body once. “I have a feeling you’d make a few people’s nights if they saw you out there.”

He shifts from one foot to the other, and fights the urge to back away. “Only if I tripped and ate dirt. I’m pretty out of practice.”

“Good a time to start as any.” She hands him her empty cup and steps towards the crowd. “I promise we’ll make you look good.”

Unlikely. He suddenly misses his uniform, too aware of his t-shirt and chinos, too used to having a table or a console between him and the eyes on him. He knows what’s expected of him as a leader and a representative, and he knows he can’t dance like either.

He hears Pidge cackling behind him, and Keith’s voice raised over the tinkling of glass, and beats a quick retreat to the relative shelter of possible lacerations.

 

\--

 

Keith’s actually beginning to look more than tipsy, his hair mussed and his limbs moving with a careful coordination, and they find a quiet spot on the ground against Black’s paw to crowd each other’s space and make out like the horny new lovers they very much are.

He slides a hand around Keith’s firm thigh, and draws away, lips buzzing. “You know how I’m a captain now?”

Keith tips his head back, takes a deep breath, and yells at the sky. “MY BOYFRIEND’S A CAPTAIN.”

“No, shhh, stop. I don’t want people looking.” He snags Keith in a headlock and covers his mouth with his palm, loosening his grip when Keith happily settles against him. He waits until the few heads that had turned to face them swivel back, and asks, “Am I too influential to take a piss behind a rock now?”

Keith hums, ruining Shiro with how seriously he’s taking the question. “Depends how big the rock is.”

“Guard me.” Shiro extricates himself and props Keith against the paw, heading for the near-distant dark desert behind Black and unbuttoning his fly as he slips into shadow, adding, “Non-violently!”

“But I’m so good at tackling!”

Shiro slinks behind a jagged boulder some twenty feet away, and turns a few times to make sure he’s alone, shouting, “You’re a pillar of the community.”

Keith calls, “You’re literally pissing.”

“Shhh.” So much for discretion. “Captains have bladders too.”

 

\--

 

They’re on their way to save Pidge and Hunk from the grips of bartending servitude to spend some unadulterated time with the team when Rizavi claps a hand on Shiro’s shoulder hard enough to make him jump.

“Ina says she needs one-point-one-nine more standard drinks to be confident dancing with me without also falling over.” She grips his bicep with both hands and tugs. “You’ll do for now.”

Shiro stands firm, supporting her weight as she swings off him. “There’s no alcohol volume on any of this stuff.”

“She has a big beautiful _brain_ , Captain.” She rolls her eyes and jerks her head towards the bar. “And she’s over there chugging a Bud right now. That’s how you know she loves me.”

Leifsdottir has a bottle to her lips, valiantly draining it with one fist clasped at her chest while Pidge hammers the table with her palm.

“Aw.” Shiro smiles, and it feels gooey and slow on his warm face. “That’s so sweet.”

“It’s a fucking fairy tale,” Rizavi yells, body at a forty-five-degree angle with the ground. “Come on, Prince Charming.”

He lowers his voice to a loud hiss, too drunk now to swerve honesty entirely. “What if I need several dozen more standard drinks?”

She freezes her pendulous motion, hauling herself back up and loosening her clasp. She offers him a knowing stare while patting him on the back, and has the surprising decorum to not call his stage fright what it is.

“You do you, sir. I’ll make sure your tombstone doesn’t mention that you’d rather die than boogie.”

He laughs unsteadily, gaze skittering over his shoulder to the place where he feels safest, and makes up his mind. “Just—go ahead. I’ll be there in a second.”

Keith’s eyes are already on him as he catches up. There’s a blush high in his cheeks that hasn’t shifted for the past hour, and he’s standing less tall and straight than usual. His shoulders sit softer and his arms are uncrossed, an open door, welcome mat rolled out.

He extends a hand, and steps into Shiro’s space when he takes it, smiling. “Glad she didn’t make me mount a rescue. Did you tell her it’s my forte?”

Shiro swoops down for a hard, brief kiss, slinging his free arm over Keith’s shoulder as his breath sucks in, and breaks off to put his lips to his ear. “Dance with me.”

Keith grips his waist and turns his head, bangs brushing Shiro’s cheek. “I can’t dance. I don’t think I can dance.”

“Neither can I,” he confesses, no shame or hesitation. “I’m really bad.”

Keith leans back, releasing Shiro’s hand to cup his jaw and brush his thumb over the corner of his mouth. “But you’re going to try anyway.”

He nods sheepishly.

Keith rises on his toes and butts his forehead into Shiro’s, probably a little harder than intended, and growls, “I fucking love you.”

“I love you.” Shiro pushes back, sweat and breath mingling. “Let me embarrass myself in front of you.”

Keith kisses him again, then snags Shiro by the elbow and marches the two of them into the heaving crowd with a determination usually reserved for asteroid fields and conference tables. Shiro wants him. Feels pride and admiration so dominating it thins his blood. Shiro isn’t alone in spending the majority of his life proving himself. He isn’t alone. Keith’s been a reminder of that since the second he decided Shiro was a man worth trusting and protecting, and as he brings Shiro to a halt beside a spinning Rizavi and Leifsdottir, Shiro’s gaze lands on Keith’s hair in his eyes and his heaving chest, and he forgets to feel nervous.

The music is fast and loud, a galloping improvised beat lead by multiple sets of drums that the rest of the players conform to, shifting every few minutes without a second’s silence to breathe. Keith’s arms immediately find their place around Shiro’s neck, and Shiro grabs his waist and pulls him flush to give himself something to do that he knows he shines at. Holding Keith’s body is his favourite new pursuit.

Rizavi whirls under Leifsdottir’s arm and into their space. “I don’t remember ordering a power couple.”

Momentum sends her away, Leifsdottir taking her place, panting and tousled. “It is a strange oversight that you expected one and not the other.”

One of Keith’s hands sinks into Shiro’s hair. “I’m with Leifsdottir.”

Rizavi howls with laughter and scoops Leifsdottir against her side, miraculously keeping her balance. “Possessive, too. Enjoy the first dance, boss.”

Shiro looks down at Keith and raises an eyebrow, the two of them pressed together and standing static in the chaos.

He knows he can hold a beat with some competency, he’s sure he can stomp his feet in time, he just doesn’t know what to do with his arms. Or his hips. Or his face, what face is he supposed to wear while he’s jerking around like a robot with a short circuit?

Keith pets the back of his hair and slides a hand down to his waist, holding Shiro’s gaze all the while as he yells, “Try to relax. I won’t laugh. I’ll deck anyone who does.”

He’s half sure he’s kidding, and he splays his hands on the small of Keith’s back. “I wouldn’t care if you laughed. I love it when you laugh.”

Keith begins to move against him, slow and fluid, tight muscles shifting under fabric. He glances down between them at the tessellation of their hips, and bites his lip as his gaze travels back up.

“It’s just moving together, right? We can do that. We’re good at fighting. We’re really good at sex.”

Shiro feels his face heat impossibly further, and corrects, “We’re _amazing_ at sex.”

Keith grins. “We can touch our toes.”

“Promise me that won’t be relevant.”

Keith nips at his jaw, his hand tightening on Shiro’s waist, guiding him left then right, and Shiro buries his face in the side of his neck and follows the rhythm of his familiar body.

 

\--

 

Making out for five minutes straight with music pounding in the background counts as dancing, right? The way Keith’s hips grind and roll against Shiro’s is definitely dancing.

Right?

 

\--

 

Shiro’s out of breath and his feet hurt and dancing with Keith is the best thing in the universe.

No, not quite. Still not as good as sex, but not far behind, and with the added benefit of being something they can share with their friends.

Right now, he’s holding Rizavi’s— _Nadia’s_ —hands in both of his and jumping up and down on the spot while Ina and Keith bump into them every few seconds.

“I knew you were fun!” Nadia screams, her headband long since abandoned around her neck and her hair rapidly escaping its ponytail. “The tightly wound ones always let loose with a bang.”

Shiro lifts her up and spins her three-sixty while she cheers like a siren, quickly letting her back down before they topple together. “Am I that uptight?”

“It’s your job to be uptight. It’s why we don’t have to be. It’s why we’d follow you anywhere.” She flings her arms in the air and shimmies, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. “Besides, uptight’s my favourite flavour. Why do you think Ina and I mix so well?”

“She says I’m a tempering influence.” Ina careens into her and wraps her arms around Nadia’s shoulders.

“Usually.” Nadia presses a messy kiss to her cheek.

He’s distracted from the painfully endearing scene by Keith shouldering his way under his arm and sliding his palm up Shiro’s chest.

Shiro grabs him close and plants his feet wide, swaying him side to side. “Hey, baby. How you holding up?”

“I’m _good_.” Keith looks wild and young and careless, and he grabs a fistful of Shiro’s shirt and tugs. “I think this is the first real party I’ve ever been to. Blades don’t get this sloppy.”

Shiro’s never considered what a clandestine rebel force does to depressurise. “No dancing?”

“Not really.” He turns, pressing his spine to Shiro’s chest and pulling his arms around his middle. “They’re big on singing though, they harmonise and everything. Once they get started that’s the rest of the night.”

The image is as incongruous as it is delightful, and Shiro hooks his chin over Keith’s shoulder, a grin tugging at his lips. “Have you ever seen Kolivan drunk?”

Keith shakes his head. “I couldn’t tell you. One time he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me how many ways I could incapacitate a man with my bare hands, but that might’ve just been small talk.”

Shiro came to the conclusion some time ago that there’s no such thing as an unhealthy fear of Kolivan, and he hopes there aren’t any listening Blades around as he asks, “How’s his singing voice?”

“Actually?” Keith snorts, body shaking against Shiro’s. “Kind of beautiful.”

He throws his head back to avoid laughing directly in Keith’s ear. “Now I wish he was here.”

“He loves you.” Keith adopts a shockingly poor impersonation of Kolivan’s voice. “ _Shiro’s always shown a great aptitude for leadership in one so young. His willingness to lay down his life for his team and his cause speaks well for him and his species_.”

Shiro’s arms unconsciously tighten around Keith’s waist, and he bites back a grimace. “Ouch.”

“Mm.” Keith grips his wrists and holds. “I wish he’d cool it on that shit when he’s around me.”

Shiro presses a kiss beneath his ear to soothe himself as much as Keith. “At least he approves.”

“He’d have a fight on his hands if he didn’t.”

“Don’t fight your eight-foot boss.”

Keith tilts to the side to catch Shiro’s eye, deadly serious. “I was talking about mom.”

It’s too much. He’s too tired and he’s had too much to drink to be able to mediate complex emotions right now. That someone who holds Keith so dear in her heart would stand in Shiro’s corner by virtue of Keith loving him sends spiderwebs of warmth out from his chest and up his throat, down his nose and into his eyes.

He never used to be a weepy drunk.

He hides his face in Keith’s shoulder and ceases even pretending to dance. “You’ll make me cry. Don’t make me cry in front of the cadets.”

Keith wriggles, and tugs at his wrists.

“Let me turn around.” He does, and Keith cranes back in the cradle of his arms and takes Shiro’s face in his hands, a small knot between his brows as he examines Shiro’s glassy eyes. “Are those happy?”

Shiro smiles, leaning into Keith’s palms and nodding fervently. “The happiest.”

A happiness born in the shack twenty feet to his right after crashing to Earth in an alien spacecraft and laying bleary eyes on a familiar face, older and sharper and laced with relief and enervation beyond its years. A happiness nurtured in the hostile uncertainty of space, raised into something unshakable and rooted in trust.

A happiness unique to the way Keith stands by his side and shares it.

Keith folds him into a sturdy hug that redefines the definition of comforting, and puts his mouth to his ear. “So many people love you. And not just because you’d die for them.”

Shiro rocks them both to match the helpless flip-flop of his heart. “I know.”

“Good.” He feels Keith’s lips curve against his jaw. “Pretty sure I love you the most though.”

As if he’s ever left any room for doubt. “I know.”

 

\--

 

As the night wears on the music slows, and Shiro grips Keith to his body with his arms around his waist, resting his head on his crown where his face is pressed to Shiro’s collarbone.

The party’s running out of steam, groups leaving for the warmth of their beds, and others slumped on the ground and talking with friends old and new.

To his left Shiro spots the Paladins gathered in a circle with their arms around each other’s waists and shoulders, spinning and swaying and laughing. He turns until Keith has a clear view of them, feeling his hot breath puff across his bare arm.

Shiro noses at Keith’s wild hair, and asks, “Do you want to go join them?”

Keith grunts. “No.”

He laughs quietly. “No?”

“I don’t know when we’ll get to do this again. I like seeing you like this.”

Shiro’s hand rubs a chain of circles on the small of his back. “Sweaty? Uncoordinated?”

“Yes.” Keith reels Shiro down for an off centre, unsteady kiss that Shiro happily accepts, keeping his face close as he says, “You look great. You look perfect.”

He closes the back of Keith’s neck in the breadth of his metal palm, closes the brief distance between them and closes his eyes and sighs. Keith’s lips are languid and testing, shallow then deep, and it’s easy for Shiro to forget how new this part of them is when it feels so seamless. Shiro and Keith loved each other. Now they love each other. There’s a space between Keith’s arms and the span of his chest and the crook of his neck, and Shiro fits them all like they were chiselled with him in mind.

He drags his mouth across his jaw, beneath his ear, down to his collar to mouth at his sticky skin.

Keith gasps in his ear, and Shiro’s only distantly aware of Ina shouting, “Nadia, I know you suggested we attempt to draw attention from Captain Shirogane’s revelry, but I refuse to remove my clothes in public.”

He halts his tongue where it’s flat against Keith’s throat, and realises his hand has found its way under Keith’s shirt, gathering it up at the back.

He quickly withdraws and tucks Keith against his side. “I think maybe we should go to Black.”

Keith nods wordlessly, throat moving as he swallows, and one hand finds its way into Shiro’s back pocket as they quickly leave the dance floor. Shiro fights to keep his hands in respectable territory as they make their way up Black’s ramp, and Keith closes it behind them.

As soon as they’re in private, Keith’s hands are on his skin, rucking his t-shirt up at the front and guiding him back to the sleeping quarters.

“You should be proud of me,” he purrs, dishevelled and lovely. "I’ve wanted to do this all night. I’ve dreamed of fucking you in here.”

Shiro groans, helping Keith shove his shirt over his head and letting it fall to the floor. “You have?”

He unbuttons Shiro’s fly and slides his hands past his waistband to grip his ass. “Don’t ask me how often.”

“Never.”

All those months traveling back to Earth in the loneliness of space. Keith told Shiro how long he’d hoped, harbouring a honed patience Shiro never intended to be directed towards him. He whispered it to Shiro in the dark of night with an honesty that humbles him. Fearing rejection, not wanting to push, and aching to be seen. It hurts to think of the extra time they could have had, and Keith’s begged him not to. No what ifs. Only what they are.

Shiro sees him now. Kicking his boots off and stripping with an unhurried confidence as Shiro slides his underwear down and tugs Keith on top of him on one of the narrow cots that had once felt so cold and empty.

His senses are dulled with alcohol, slow to get hard, but no less blissful, fingers and lips skirting skin and scars and hair and the grit of dirt.

Keith moves down his body and parts Shiro’s legs, and he squirms, aware of the sweat of the night. “I’m all gross.”

Keith kisses his knee before draping it over his shoulder, and murmurs, “So am I,” dipping down and licking a long stripe behind his balls as Shiro moans and tangles his own hair in his fingers, wrought speechless.

His orgasm feels like it builds for hours, travelling outward until it envelops him, his muscles running loose and his brain slipping sideways in his head, coherent thought scattering like ball bearings. Keith finishes him with a spit slick hand on his dick and whispered words, rutting against Shiro and latching onto his neck until Shiro floats back down and gathers the coherency to ardently return the favour. Taking him in his mouth and breathing deep, clumsy and imperfect, and still enough for Keith to cling to his hair and clamp Shiro’s head between his trembling thighs.

 

\--

 

He wakes too soon with a blanket barely covering his ass, plastered to Keith’s gently rising chest in the tiny bed and in dire need of a shower. His head aches dully, and he lays a kiss on Keith’s sleeping cheek and carefully leaves the bed in search of bottled water he knows he’ll find in Black’s small cargo hold.

He gulps it down, tepid but welcome, and tip toes back past Keith towards the cockpit with the bottle in hand. As he steps through the door to the Lion’s head, he’s greeted by the first rays of the day and an endless horizon crowned in glowing flame. It seems selfish face it alone.

Keith’s already blinking awake when he returns, arms stretched over his head and a small smile on his lips as he takes in Shiro in all his naked glory.

Shiro commits it to memory, the tan lines on his arms and curve of his calf and the spill of the grey blanket over his lap.

“Morning, beautiful.”

Keith’s voice is quiet and croaky and warm. “Hey.”

The affection Shiro feels is almost desperate, clawing and beating its fists on his ribs. He sits on the edge of the bed and hands Keith the water, rubbing at his bare hip.

“How you feeling?”

He answers with a small groan, still chugging.

“We can go back to sleep in a minute,” Shiro promises. “Sun’s coming up. Let’s go watch.”

Keith wraps the blanket around Shiro’s shoulders when he stands, indulging Shiro when he molds himself to his back as they walk.

At the pilot’s chair Shiro hesitates, and Keith pushes him into it without a word, curling himself on his lap as Shiro folds the blanket around him like wings.

The sun is a beaming half sphere now, but Keith ignores it in favour of cocking his head and dragging his eyes over Shiro.

He reaches up and tugs gently on a lock of Keith’s hair. “What?”

“You in that seat.” Keith hums, palms coming to rest on Shiro’s chest. “It still looks right.

Shiro swallows, voice low to keep from breaking. “What does Black think?”

Keith narrows his eyes and takes a deep breath, gripping Shiro’s chin and tipping his head for a short, soft kiss.

“She knows it’s you,” he whispers to Shiro’s mouth, eyes closing. “She knows where you fit.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3
> 
> title from 'Emily' by Joanna Newsom
> 
> twitter [tinkers_cuss](https://twitter.com/tinkers_cuss)


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